Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/53

 him a salient distinction, indeed real isolation, among the "Jacksonian rabble" who imagine that Mr. Hergesheimer is one of them, and who still constitute the main body of the anti-Puritan movement. Yet, as an artist, he finds himself constrained to be essentially an anti-moralist. He welcomes all experience in proportion to its intensity and richness of color. He cannot help admitting his "preference for girls who have the courage of their emotions." He cannot help confessing his artistic pleasure in observing a crucifix as the background of a prostitute. He cannot deny himself the revenge upon his Presbyterian ancestors, which consists in referring to the prostitutes of a house in Havana as "informal girls," as if, forsooth, when one emerges from the ancestral hypocrisies of Presbyterianism, "formality" remains the only real distinction between these girls and any other sort of girls.

Oh Cornelia—I begin to understand what troubles you!

Mr. D. H. Lawrence seems to have set out with the notion that sex is the greatest thing in the world, and with the correlative notion that we can't very well have too much of it, or have it on too easy terms. He is still, if I understand